1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a moving image creating apparatus, a moving image creating method, and a program. More particularly, the invention relates to a moving image creating apparatus, a moving image creating method, and a program for easily creating moving image data furnished with dramatic accompaniments such as musical compositions and special effects.
2. Description of the Related Art
In recent years, some personal computers (PCs) have come to be equipped with the capability of enabling users to edit the still and moving images they took and create photo albums (electronic albums) using such images.
Illustratively, Japanese Patent Laid-open No. 2001-285784 (called the Patent Document 1 hereunder) discloses an image editing process that allows the user to designate images stored on a hard disk drive or the like. According to the process, the designated images are suitably edited (in what is called the effect process) before being displayed one by one in keeping with prepared music (BGM). This process is characterized by the capability to randomly determine the effects to be applied to the images so that the same designated images can be made into different contents.
Japanese Patent Laid-open Nos. 2006-86621, 2006-86622 and 2006-166164 (called the Patent Documents 2, 3 and 4 respectively hereunder) disclose techniques for allowing the user to choose from prepared musical compositions and to select a photo album that contains the still images desired to be reproduced. The still images are then processed to reflect the atmosphere of the selected musical composition and made into a slide-show content (i.e., play list) displayed one image after another to the accompaniment of the music.
According to the image editing process disclosed by the above-cited Patent Document 1, the eventual content to be created is unpredictable, and may or may not conform to the user's expectations. That is because the same designated images are turned randomly into different contents.
With any one of the techniques disclosed by the Patent Documents 1 through 4, the user needs to designate the images to be processed into contents. The user may well find it irksome and time-consuming to search numerous images in stock for those desired to be processed.